From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri May 9 03:17:32 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id DAA25017 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 9 May 1997 03:17:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bunyip.cc.uq.edu.au (daemon@bunyip.cc.uq.edu.au [130.102.2.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id DAA25009 for ; Fri, 9 May 1997 03:17:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by bunyip.cc.uq.edu.au (8.8.5/8.8.5) id UAA09544 for freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org; Fri, 9 May 1997 20:17:27 +1000 Received: from localhost.devetir.qld.gov.au by ogre.dtir.qld.gov.au (8.7.5/DEVETIR-E0.3a) with SMTP id UAA28441 for ; Fri, 9 May 1997 20:17:51 +1000 (EST) Message-Id: <199705091017.UAA28441@ogre.dtir.qld.gov.au> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: why 'toor'? References: In-Reply-To: from Michael Hancock at "Thu, 08 May 1997 11:11:42 +0000" Date: Fri, 09 May 1997 20:17:49 +1000 From: Stephen McKay Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Thursday, 8th May 1997, Michael Hancock wrote: >On 8 May 1997, Choi Jun Ho wrote: > >> >From all the dist of FreeBSD I've seen, there is an id 'toor', >> equivalent to 'root'. I heard that is for Bourne-shell root users, but >> I cannot understand why two root id exist. Is it a some traditional >> reason or some kind of joke? > >'root' is to be used with 'sh' a statically linked binary in case /usr >isn't mounted. > >'toor' can use a dynamically linked 'bash' and be equivalent to root. Sounds like a good plan, but it's not what we do. As distributed, "root" on FreeBSD runs /bin/csh, and "toor" runs /bin/sh (both are only available statically linked). Since I hate csh with a burning passion, I always delete "toor" and convert "root" to sh when installing FreeBSD. By the way, "Charlie Root" and "Bourne-again Superuser" are a bit silly as names. I always include the machine name, like "doorstop root". I suppose the real reason for "toor" is to appease the csh haters. It's been like that since 386BSD as far as I can recall. I don't think it was like this in the 4.2 BSD days, but I now have no way to check. Stephen.